Lap dancing: behind the scenes

It's 5.45 on a gloomy afternoon in Tottenham Court Road and Natasha is playing with her G-string. We are in a semi-dark basement room with a man who appears to be a bishop mumbling into the breasts of a naked girl. Enrique Iglesias' number-one hit Hero goes into a crescendo and Natasha whips off the last sliver of lace, turns around and touches her toes. At that precise moment I get a good look at the bishop and see he is merely a man in a mauve open-neck top with a white T-shirt.

The Spearmint Rhino club is full of disappointments. It is also full of controversy. Spearmint Rhino's entertainment licence is due for renewal soon and Camden council's licensing committee is expected to make a decision next month.

Last time it granted only a six months' licence - rather than a year - because of concerns over what was happening in the club. Clients, it was claimed, were breaking the lap dance taboo by touching the girls and police investigated allegations of prostitution. Prudential Assurance, which owns the building, was horrified and a spokesman said the company was reviewing Spearmint Rhino's rental contract.

"If there are immoral activities taking place in there we will take all possible steps to rectify the situation," a Prudential spokesman said.

The club brought disappointment too for Samantha McGaw. She was the club's head waitress, and earned £26,000 and £5,000 a month in tips. The management fired her after she became pregnant.

She won £60,000 for sex discrimination at an industrial tribunal, and in the process talked of sexual predators among the male staff and what she described as her appalling "humiliation".

It's a word you use gently down here, especially with a bright young woman like Natasha. She says she is 21, gave up ballet after an injury and is now doing a drama degree in Sidcup. Lap dancing means she doesn't need a student loan.

For £20 she will take you into a "VIP booth", take off her clothes to music and do her best to take your mind off the idea that this is exactly like a dentist's waiting room in a power cut. Natasha is a real trouper, never looks bored and says the management treat her like an angel. "If they didn't," she says, snatching her G-string from the floor, "I'd be out of here."

Samantha's tribunal revealed the amazing sums staff can earn at the clubs for a few hours' work. So what is the reality behind this strange netherworld, bedecked in leopard-skin carpet, awash with women in thongs, men in suits and now burdened with a reputation for - of all things - sex discrimination?

Well, Spearmint Rhino is the shape of things to come, according to Max Clifford. He and lap dancing are like two specks in the cosmos, destined to collide. He is the club's publicist and says it took £300,000 a week just before Christmas and the message is grow, grow, grow. Indeed, in the past three years the lap dancing industry, as it is unblushingly called, has blossomed.

Spearmint Rhino is the creation of John Gray, a Californian who has been described as looking like a TV evangelist with a gorgeous quiff. There is no record of what his friends say.

Mr Gray's organisation has 27 clubs in the United States with a turnover of around £30 million a year. In Las Vegas, the flagship club, they take more than a million dollars a month.

Now this figure invites a little mental arithmetic. One million dollars is just over £700,000, or in Las Vegas club terms around £175,000 a week.

This is barely more than half the figure Mr Clifford says is generated by the Tottenham Court Road Club in a week. So is Britain the richest market for lap dancing? As Max Clifford might say: yes, yes, YES!

Spearmint Rhino is only one of an estimated 150 lap dancing clubs which have proliferated over the past three or four years. There are at least 20 in London alone. They are all part of an industry which probably generates more than £1 billion a year and is growing fast. The massive expansion has sparked concerns about the effectiveness of controls on the clubs - and what it says about the morality of the growing number of punters who spend their money there.

Spearmint Rhino's John Gray wants at least 20 clubs in Britain. He already has seven: four in London, three in the provinces.

The clientele for these establishments is hard to characterise. In the Spearmint Rhino they appeared to be a mix of intense unaccompanied, middle-aged men and jolly City-types in a group, egging each other on.

"I have two or three gentlemen who just come down and have a drink with me," Natasha said. "The rest want me to take my clothes off."

For this, the rewards can be impressive, although hers must be one of the few jobs where the employee pays the boss. Natasha hands over £60 every day she comes to work. The money she earns comes from what the punters pay her to undress in the so-called VIP room. How much? It could be as little as £100, she says, but usually it's much, much more.

Christmas is a good time, not because of festive goodwill but because City folk know what their bonuses will be. According to Spearmint Rhino lore the club always lays on a limo for a number of merchant banks and broker firms.

Drinks are not cheap - £6 for a glass of wine - but there is a free, uninterrupted strip show on stage. "See that?", barks the disc jockey. "That's Samantha. She's exceptional. Worth taking to the VIP room, isn't she?"

There may be dozens of girls at any one time; some like Natasha work on a permanent arrangement, but others belong to what is called the X-list. This is a register of at least 250 lap dancers who move between the clubs.

Peter Stringfellow, who pioneered lap dancing in London, draws his girls from a pool. He said they can earn from £100 to £1,000 a night.

Punters pay £10 for a lap dance and Mr Stringfellow is swift to point out that, unlike Spearmint Rhino, his club does not have "VIP rooms".

"It's not the way we do things," he says huffily. "Who knows what goes on in those booths."

During my brief sojourn the answer was not very much, but a Spearmint Rhino girl claimed recently she performed what was described as "a lewd sex act" on TV presenter Jamie Theakston in just such a setting. She said he paid £1,000 for the privilege.

Such stories dismay and upset Mr Stringfellow. His lap dancers do not remove their G-strings. He explained: "In Westminster, where we are, it's illegal for table dancers to strip naked.

"In my view, this puts me at an unfair disadvantage. Spearmint Rhino comes under Camden council and they have decided to allow nude dancing. I've got to go that route to stay in the game."

Mr Stringfellow said he is now applying for what he calls his "naked licence" from Westminster. If he gets it, his table dancers will be freed of their restricting G-strings. Camden has become the Amsterdam of London with its free and easy attitude to nudity, he said. All the new clubs are opening there and Westminster must overcome its modesty or be left behind.

Meanwhile Max Clifford said that the club intended to appeal against Ms MsGaw's £60,000 sex discrimination award. And he brushed aside her complaints about club bosses making racy remarks about women staff.

"If you work with stunning women, you will probably talk about what you would like to do with them," he said.